Improving Sanitation and Federal Inspection at Slaughter Plants

GAO reviewed the administration of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act by the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) at meat and poultry slaughter plants that do business in interstate commerce. Certain areas were identified in which FSIS could improve inspection activities and plant managers could better carry out their responsibilities to assure that slaughter plant operations are sanitary and that meat and poultry products are wholesome, unadulterated, and properly marked.

Those areas needing improvement included: (1) sanitation; (2) pest control; (3) plant water systems; (4) product acceptance testing programs; (5) ante-mortem and post-mortem examinations; and (6) controls over condemned and inedible materials. Unannounced visits were made to 62 randomly selected meat and poultry slaughter plants in six States to evaluate plant and inspection staff compliance with inspection program requirements. Nearly one-fourth of those plants visited were not in compliance with one or more of the six basic inspection program requirements. The high incidence of unacceptable ratings and the large number of deficiencies found at plants not severe enough to warrant unacceptable ratings showed that both plant managers and inspection program staff were not fully meeting their responsibilities. Part of this inadequacy could have been due to a shortage of trained inspectors caused by hiring and budget restrictions. Because of these shortages, certain inspection responsibilities had been neglected, including supervising line inspectors, performing acceptance tests, monitoring plant conditions and operations, and inspecting processing departments.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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